Kirk Russell - Redback

She waved a self-deprecating hand at herself and the agent alongside.

‘You may also have been in love and afraid now you’re being unfair to him and blowing things out of proportion, but you’re not. He set that fire, Maria. He’s planning other operations and we’re racing the clock. I need you to help me, right now, here in this room. We don’t have a lot of time and you could save lives. Who else should we talk to? Give me some other names.’

Maria didn’t have any other names. Hosfleter thanked her, but later that night after Gant’s face showed on national news and the FBI announced a fugitive warrant naming him as wanted in connection with the fire bombing of the Wonder Rock Condominiums, Maria’s name got leaked as a former girlfriend questioned today. It sounded as if she’d been picked up and brought in. It was unfair and a decision to sweat Maria, despite Maria having come forward. Marquez listened to the TV report and then called Carol Shauf.

‘I’ll meet you there tomorrow,’ Shauf said. ‘I’ll borrow a DBEEP boat. See you around noon. Do you really think we can find this island?’

‘I don’t know, but I think we’ve got a better chance than anyone else.’

‘You might have a short comeback as a Fed if you go poking into someone else’s investigation.’

‘They’re coming after Maria.’

‘See you tomorrow. Look for a DBEEP boat.’

The next morning as Marquez drove toward the delta he talked to his sister. Darcey asked, ‘Do you remember when we were out of money and living in Berkeley in that trailer on that lot next to Mom’s friend’s house?’

‘Sure, on Blake Street, it’s hard to forget.’

‘Mom’s friend let us use that bathroom in the basement, only there was no shower so we had to wash in the sink or else go up to that lake in the park. What was the name of that lake?’

‘Lake Anza. Good times.’

‘Yeah, good times. It’s why I’ve never had kids. Something happened last night that made me think about that summer and helping Dad sell dope on Telegraph Avenue. Mom had that little colored tape for the baggies and you and me and Dad would go up there after dark and he’d find clients and then send us to get the money and deliver the dope because we were still minors.’

‘We were good at it.’

She laughed and said, ‘No, we were great, especially you. But remember that night that weird guy led us down the street to his van. We were carrying the baggies and he was going to pay us at his van.’

‘Durant Street toward the parking lot; there’s a building there now.’

‘We both knew that man was going to try to do something. Remember that feeling?’

‘What brings this back?’

‘Last night I started to go to my car after I locked up, and I just felt something was wrong, I don’t know what. I park my car where I can see it from my office, and we don’t have many problems like that here, but when I’m locking up late I’m more careful. I got that same feeling as that night in Berkeley, so I went back inside and sat up in the office with the lights out. I sat in my chair where I can look out the window and after awhile I fell asleep. When I woke up, I decided I was crazy. But when I looked outside, there was a man standing back behind the right rear of my car. It was like he stood up to stretch his legs. He must have been crouched down between a truck and my car.’

Her voice slowed now. She wanted him to register and remember what she was going to say next.

‘He stood for a minute or two and then crouched down again and I called the state troopers. Before they got there he took off in a Jeep Cherokee, so I called the troopers back and told them he was leaving Seward. They pulled him over in Moose and he had two guns in the car with suppressors. Turns out he’s wanted for a double murder in Georgia and the FBI agents up here think he’s a hit man.’

‘Have you got the agents’ names?’

She had their cards and read off their names and phone numbers.

‘I’ll call them. Is there somebody who wants your restaurant?’

‘You mean, like my partner hiring someone to kill me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus, John, this is Seward, Alaska.’

She didn’t have the fishing boat anymore and she’d never remarried, but she had a partner in the bar/restaurant and they were doing enough business to get by and he had never heard her talk about any strife with the partner. What he was going to ask now was unfair to Darcey, but even after being sworn in only yesterday, it was possible. Unlikely, but with a leak with the Bureau, it was possible.

‘Do you have some place outside of Seward where you could stay?’

‘Who would run the restaurant and bar?’

‘Your partner.’

‘John, I’ve got my dogs.’

‘Take them with you.’

‘You say it like it’s easy. John, all I have for money is this business.’

‘I’ll send you some money.’

‘You’ll send me some money? What are you talking about? I’m supposed to go hide? Until when? Is it because of what you’re getting into?’

‘It could be, Darcey, and I’m very sorry.’

‘What does that mean, that you’re sorry? You’re crazy if you think I can just pick up and go. Come on, John, is there really somebody out there who would come all the way here to hurt me because of something you’re doing? I don’t believe that. People like that don’t exist.’

‘There is somebody and the task force I’ve joined is targeting him.’

‘OK, then I’ll just leave everything and wait for you to tell me when I can come back. When are you going to tell me that?’

He didn’t have a good answer and he drove thinking about what to do. The Sacramento River was off to his right, green and smooth in the morning sun and he remembered Captain Viguerra saying that there are a few men that you should never go after unless you are prepared to give up everything you love. Some will take it all from you to stop you. Viguerra had brought his hands together slowly to demonstrate Miguel Salazar crushing the skulls of his enemies, then said, ‘But the ones to fear will kill you from the inside out. They will find out what you love and take it away. You will be alive still but dead inside. These you can only fight if you have nothing to lose.’

Maria remembered the island as close to the Antioch Bridge, so he and Shauf worked slowly away from the bridge, island to island. They circled several and returned a third time to one. Shauf dropped him at a rotting dock and Marquez climbed up to a levee road where he found a fishing rod and a tin bucket with anchovies, but no fisherman. He walked the road looking down to his left at the island and watching on the other side in the trees and brush near the water for the fisherman. He figured it was someone was looking for catfish in the tules.

On the island side of the levee was an ancient apple orchard and falling-down sheds with corrugated metal siding. Even from here he could see someone had walked through the dry rye grass between the trees in the orchard to one of the sheds, and momentarily he considered hiking down, but they’d already been on the river four and a half hours and Shauf was ready to call it an afternoon. She needed to get the boat back. He studied the sheds out across the orchard, and then walked back to the rotted dock and Shauf’s DBEEP boat.

On the way home he called Hosfleter and gave her the coordinates of three islands. Then he made another call and a stop in the town of El Cerrito where Alicia Guayas and her son, James, lived in an apartment just off the freeway. Maybe he stopped today because he felt the past returning. Alicia handed him a mug of rich Mexican hot chocolate with canela and frothed milk. A Telenova soap opera played on TV. She turned that off and their conversation turned first, as it always did, to family.